On Growing Old, Being Loved, and Becoming Real
A reflection on the Velveteen Rabbit
“I think I need to invest in some wrinkle cream,” I said to my husband as I stared in the bathroom mirror.
He laughed. “Why do you need wrinkle cream?”
“To prevent wrinkles,” I replied tersely. Doesn’t he know how this works? I patted my hair. “I think I need to start dyeing my hair too. The grays are becoming more and more unruly.”
He smiled and kissed my forehead. “I believe you’re beautiful just the way you are.”
I groaned and rolled my eyes. Of course, he’d say that. That’s what he vowed to do at the altar. I smile warily. “You know you did this to me, right? I didn’t have gray hair until I married you and we had kids.”
We laugh, because it’s been a running joke since I found my first gray hair a few weeks after our wedding. But deep down, there’s a part of me that bitterly believes it to be true.
My body, though still young, is already full of signs of aging. Wrinkles and gray hair. Joints that creak and groan. Skin that dries out the moment the weather changes. Each day, it seems like I’m finding another part of my body that resembles my mother; I remember looking at her hands with their protruding veins as a child and asking in wonder, “Will mine do that?!” I can already see it happening. She complained of her arms randomly going to sleep; now mine do that while I work out or when I’m in bed.
Childbearing also took its toll on my body. My low back easily becomes sore after carrying my firstborn and twin boys in my womb. My stomach looks like a parched lake with its stretch marks and will likely never be completely flat like it was in college. I have a scar where my twins were surgically removed from me when my body was unable to push them out. I wear my knees out bending down and driving cars on the floor.
We often joke and poke fun at our families to blame them for our messy homes and decrepit bodies, and deep down perhaps we truly do blame them to some extent. If it weren’t for being married to a sinner and birthing multiple children, maybe I wouldn’t look so haggardly.
What if we flipped that narrative?
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